Saturday, May 9, 2009

So I'm sitting here on the balcony of my room at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel, room 315. I just came back from a 5 hour trek up the hills behind Monaco into France into some region/town called Beausoleil (beautiful sun literally, as per my exquisite french skillz). This is my thing- to just randomly walk/explore my way in an unknown place with little to no planning, besides looking at a map and picking a place to direct my feet towards. Views of the city and the water were fantastic and I'll post my pictures when I get back to Australia.

Hmm, it doesn't quite make sense starting this entry with the last thing I did, so lemme restart. The trip started with my 9 hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong where I stayed the weekend with my grandma. Had the great food that I love (getting hungry now damn) and just chilled with family for the most part. The flight from HK to Paris was 12.5 hours, getting to be an annoyingly long distance to fly but I still don't mind it at all. There was really bumpy turbulence right as we neared the Himalayas, which was really sweet, but only lasted like half an hour. On the flight from Paris to Nice, France, I sat right across from poker players I know from online and we all took a taxi to Monte Carlo. The lady drove 80 mph in pouring rain on a windy highway at night which was fun haha. Good ol' $125 taxi 30 minute taxi ride. Welcome to Monte Carlo.

I was fortunate enough while here to meet a lot of my poker playing peers who I see all the time online. It's neat matching the name I see online to the actual face of these guys. They were all great guys to hang out with during breakfast every morning and chilling at night. Stuff was mad expensive though, every meal was at least 15-20 euros, coke was 5 euro, etc, so that sorta sucked.

The poker part of the trip was pretty standard; I wasn't really able to get anything going in the tournaments. I played some single table tournies tho, and was able to meet Nelly (the rapper) and playing with him. We were next to each other in one of them and I introduced myself and chatted with him for a bit. Apparently he's been sooo unlucky the past tournies he's played, losing everything. He then showed me his lucky hand.. 7-4 suited, folded when 2 guys went all in, and whispered to me, "man i was gonna call that 1 guy's all in... my lucky hand." Somehow, I don't think luck has anything to do with your losing Nelly haha. And also, that 100k+ watch you're wearing that has diamonds everywhere a diamond can be on a watch doesn't make me feel tooooo bad. We sorta ended on bad terms tho, I think, when I called and busted him a little later. Good game Nelly.

Flew back to Hong Kong afterwards, spent a couple days there chilling with my grandma again, before heading back to Sydney where I am now. Spending 1 more month here until I head back to the states finally in June. I met a good friend of mine in Sydney as we both planned to arrive here at the same time, and he'll be staying with me for 3 weeks, which should be awesome. We plan to sightsee Sydney, relax in general, and eventually make a roadtrip out to Melbourne which should be sweet.